Friday, November 1, 2013

Danse Macabre--chapter 13

Something else annoying that LKH does is ruin point out her own logical holes and then not fix them. Example? Example. She points out that Jean Claude's underground lair is lit with electric lights, but the hallway is lit with torches and the combination of the two is kinda weird. You know what? It IS weird. Why would you run wires through the rock hallways (given that it'd be easier than drilling new holes in the fucking rock to run your wires) and then NOT USE THE WIRES. WHY in the name of FUCK would anyone want torches if they have access to electric light? It made kind of sort of sense with Nikolaus but Jean Claude likes his toys. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS.

Asher's introductory paragraph is...special.

Asher glided toward us, and it was almost as if his feet didn’t touch the ground, as if he were floating. He was always graceful, but not like that. He was one of the best at levitating that I’d ever seen, so that he could do what the legends say: Asher could fly.

I am not the best at grammar in the whole wide world, and I try not to make statements if I am not sure, so fucking trust me. COLONS. DO NOT. WORK. THAT. WAY.

A colon is an equals sign. Everything on this side=everything on this side. One rule: Make them fucking balance. And even if it kind of sort of works if you squint at it sideways, it's ugly.

Tonight it was as if he could barely force himself to walk when he knew he had wings and longed to use them. He was like some earthbound angel waiting to fling himself skyward.

His clothes helped the angelic illusion. He was all in white with gold and copper thread worked through the frock coat, and along a pair of silk pants that ended at his knees, where white hose took up, and ended in white high heels with golden buckles. The shoes reminded me that the original high heel was meant for men.

I swear to god every time LKH walks into a Joann's it must be fucking embarrassing. I'm a fiber-phile and even I don't go that ape-shit over clothes.

The Drunk-Krunk descriptions continue for a minute, and then Asher reveals that he's gotten new powers too. So apparently the level up evolved all the pokemon, and not just Anita and her tri-whatevers. HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT you know what, I'm not even going to bother. Fine. She's leveled up all her friends and none of her enemies. Moving on.

So the first thing Cape Cod dude (I am not writing Master of Cape Cod. Fewest possible words, my lovelies) does is apologize for his wife causing Anita's little episode. Anita pounces on that like white on rice. It's all somebody else's fault. Lady, unless he's got Sleez's mind-control rape stick, you did it all on your own. Own your fucking shit, Anita. Own your shit.

Also, apparently Anita inspired Thea. That is one scary lady Cape Cod is married to.

Samuel finished for him. “Thea is other, and she reasons in ways that do not always make much sense to those of us who began life as human beings.” He didn’t sound entirely happy about it, but he stated it as truth.

On the one hand, I like that concept a lot, and I really enjoy playing with the concept of non-human sentience and how that might work. On the other hand, the whole "other=non human" thing is kind of icky for reasons I can't really articulate right now, and also that is the biggest fucking copout oh my fucking god. Just say that the woman is ruthless and stick with it. She wants her powerbase to be very big, and that means making her sons big mojo. There. There you go. It's not that hard.

And again, Samuel threatens to shatter one of the few established rules of this universe: Vampires can't reproduce biologically unless they are REALLY young and go through a lot of work to make it happen. There's no open confirmation on the biology of Thea's kids, but it's strongly implied that's he's the biological dad.

Samuel and his kid, Sampson, both point out that Anita is enslaving everyone she fucks. She's like "What? I don't do that." And everyone else is like YES YOU FUCKING DO and isn't this a book about dancing? Do you think maybe we could get to the dancing parts? This is getting boring. No?

Then Jean Claude risks shattering the known universe by asking Samuel for advice. It's reguarding Anita and her growing powers. Because treating her like a side of beef is how you solve issues in this universe.

And then oh my god, my lovelies. We're about to wander off into the deep end of the suck. Because just when I thought I was desensitized to all the awful, we go leaping into whole new realms. And I am not kidding here. The fun, oooh-look-how-awful element of the snark? It's about to go away. I can't even point and laugh after this point. All I can do is try not to hurl.

He shook his head. “No, I am master, and father, and I will do it.” He looked back at Jean-Claude. “Thea tried to bring Sampson into his powers as a siren.”

\“Thea tried to bring Sampson into his powers as a siren.”

Well, okay, now maybe it's not that bad. They're both consenting adults, they could be into it mutually. Maybe--

He nodded. “Sampson came to me, and I told her, in no uncertain terms, that if she ever tried to do it again I would kill her. When the twins began to exhibit faint signs of power, I gave her the talk again.”

“In my mother’s defense,” Sampson said, “when I said no, she took no for an answer. She didn’t have to. I’m her son, but I’m not a siren yet; if she’d pushed her powers, then I wouldn’t have had a choice. She stopped when she realized I was horrified. She didn’t understand why it bothered me, but she accepted it.”

Yeah. You don't threaten to kill a family member over consensual sex. And "stopped" implies that something had started when Sampson finally talked his mother into stopping her assault. So I'm going to let you work through all the squick inherent in this. It'll take a while. There's lots of awful layers.

Samuel, it turns out, is pushing his kids onto Anita because he's trying to save them from their mother.

And Sam's reasoning isn't any better. He's not trying to save them because their mother is a sexual predator, this is morally wrong and the therapy bills. Nope. He wants the power and he's willing to let Thea do it, but he's worried it might "break their sanity". Please explain what that word means in this context, dude. Also, very nice, implying that incest victims are insane. Get fucked, please.

I do not wish to be forced to either imprison or kill my own child, Jean-Claude, and that is what we might have to do.”

Your wife is a sexual predator, then. If she can't keep herself from raping her own fucking children then she is a sexual predator and you need to not be married and/or reproducing with her anymore. Also, OH MY FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING GOD. HE MIGHT HAVE TO KILL HIS CHILD BECAUSE HIS WIFE RAPED THEM. HEY, CAN WE TALK ABOUT VICTIM BLAMING FOR A MINUTE, BECAAUSE HOIHO:IHIOFOJKHA:OKDLkhs;lkfs;lkjf;awlekj;oi I'm sorry, I think I just rage-broke my brain.

THIS IS THE ONLY SANE REACTION. DISCOVER PARTNER IS BAD PERSON: GET AWAY FROM BAD PERSON. ANYTHING ELSE IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE AND WRONG.

Richard then takes issue with the fact that Anita is even considering this.

Of course it is because Richard is jealous and confused--perfectly understandable, given that Anita is an abusive fucking rapist that will NOT let him just cut ties and disappear, I'd be confused too--and not because, you know, IT'S FUCKING WRONG. But I really can't see how this could get any wors--

“God help me, but you and your brothers are actually in a more perverted sexual mess than we are. If I say no, and the worst happens…”

So if Thea rapes her sons, it's Richard's fault.

There is only one sane response to this.

Then there's a big long speel about how Anita is saving Samuel's family from destruction and I have to stop that bullshit before it gets started. Anita is not saving shit. Anita is in no way responsible for Thea's behavior or misbehavior.

Samuel had accepted that someday the worst would happen, and suddenly he was saved.

Yeah. That's squick inducing nonsensical bullshit. NO. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT THAT ABUSE WILL HAPPEN EVER. NOT TO YOU and sure as FUCKING FUCK you do not have to accept that abuse will happen to your children. If you think there's even a CHANCE of shit going down like this? GET OUT. RUN. RUN AS FUCKING FAR AS YOU FUCKING CAN. NOTHING IS WORTH LETTING THAT LEVEL OF HARM HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILDREN. And if one of your children come to you and say the other parent did something? Fucking evaporate. And if you can't do that, start making phone calls and send the kids someplace safe as often as you can. NEVER EVER EVER LEAVE THEM IN THE ROOM ALONE WITH THE DANGEROUS INDIVIDUAL. EVER. DO NOT EVER LEAVE A CHILD IN A DANGEROUS SITUATION. YOU ARE A GROWN ADULT. YOU MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO PROTECT THEM COMPLETELY BUT YOU CAN GIVE YOURSELF A HERNIA TRYING.

I still wasn’t sure how I felt about adding to my men, but it was nice, for a change, to be someone’s salvation instead of their doom. Yeah, being the savior instead of the executioner, that sounded pretty damn good.

I am deep inside the brain pan of a rapist. I am making no judgements on the author--actually, yes I fucking am but I'm not sharing them because that's not what this blog is for, let's please not do that mkay?--but as far as Anita's thought processes, this is how they work. This is how they think. You ever want to know what a sexual predator's thinking looks like? Read this chapter and focus on that last paragraph. I do not see how any sane, rational, well-meaning human being can look at that situation and go "HEY, HAVING SEX WITH CHILDREN TO SAVE THE CHILDREN FROM INCEST IS THE BEST MOVE". A sane human being would call Child Services first (the two boys are still underage and the father has ADMITTED there is a chance Mom could molest them, and that Mom has molested other kids. An intervention of some kind should damn well be a given) and then, when that failed, would call the armed assassins they have for buddies because you don't solve this shit by saying "at least Mommy isn't the one hurting you". You solve it by making sure the shit stops, and that sex is involved in the solving approximately never. The thought of Edward and Guilty Pleasures era Anita going sawed-off-shotgun on Thea and Current Anita's asses right now is the only thing keeping me from foaming at the fucking mouth. THEY ARE ACTIVELY CONTEMPLATING THIS. FUCK. THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS. I am at the point where I really don't want to sort through this to find the words to explain this judgement call to anybody, because nothing about this shit is okay. NOTHING. This chapter is over and I can go scrub off and get clean and that's exactly what I'm going to go do.

4 comments:

Reasons it might be giving you icky feelings is because every time I’ve read “such and so is other” it’s been in an essay referring to how marginalized groups are viewed and treated in society. Plus, her non-human sentience isn’t really elaborated on or explored at all, it’s just tossed out as justification for incestuousness and left at that, so that makes it “other = grossness/badness” rather than “other = different”

I have yet to find myself desensitized to all the awful that Anita can bring

Thea doesn’t actually seem half the sexual predator to me that Anita is. Thea respected his “no” and backed off, though indeed you‘re right that the wording implies she still started SOMETHING. Anita just rapes as she pleases, no respect for nos, no remorse, no acknowledgement of what she’s even doing. And she doesn’t even have the “oh, her mind is totally alien to human mores and such” excuse going. LKH, WHEN YOUR HEROINE COMES OFF WORSE THAN THE MOM MOLESTING HER SONS, YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG.

Yeah, the whole “oh, they would go insane if she raped them and have to be killed” is indeed so fucking full of victim-blaming, not to mention the idea that one would KILLS INSANE PEOPLE BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING ELSE TO BE DONE WITH THEM. Of course, out of all the mentally ill people we’ve seen in AB, only *one* was not a wanton murderer, and that guy was a complete agoraphobe who never left his home. LKH has a very…medieval understanding of mental issues, clearly, among everything else.

Anita thinks frighteningly like a rapist, she really does. I too tried to avoid passing judgments on the author, but LKH is past the point where it’s possible not to for me as well. Seriously, who would write a plot/dilemma/etc like this? Fucked-up plots full of fucked-up things and fucked-up choices can be great to write and read, but they have to have an ultimate point, a reason, a meeting, some kind of answer reached at the end, or really thought-provoking questions raised, that kind of thing. This just produces disgust at the situation, further disgust that the author doesn’t even seem to comprehend what she’s writing, and them more disgust that she’s probably getting off on it through her avatar.

Dexter is a serial murderer. He and Anita have a lot in common. They both do not give one solid fuck about anything other than what gets them off and what keeps them alive. The difference is that in DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER (and I assume the other Dexter books) there's an unspoken acknowledgement that this is WRONG. Dexter himself was taught over and over and overandoverandover that killing people is WRONG...but since he's going to do it anyway, go do it over here to other killers, rather than to innocent victims (and it kind of helps that Dex has the sex drive of a frightened walnut) Sure, it's a "shrug and do it anyway" kind of acknowledgement, but the book itself still treats the entire idea of its protagonist as something that is FUCKING WRONG.

It's not the same here. This situation is being presented as 100% Okay. Not the Thea part, but Anita's role in this. She's a savior for having sex with men who are manipulated into it. The only voice of reason here is Richard, a person the author is going OUT OF HER WAY to demonize as an untruthful, unfaithful, evil person. That gives no weight to the moral scales here. And in reality, Thea is a rapist because Thea BEING a rapist gives Anita justification for having savior-sex with Thea's children. Her character, like all the others, is constructed so that Anita has a reason to fuck something. Anita's character included. And because the author cannot just write a fucking mutually consensual sex scene, EVERYTHING is forced, and we wind up with these awful convoluted scenarios, and that STILL does not answer the question of HOW CAN YOU LOOK AT THIS SHIT AND THINK IT IS OKAY. How can you THINK of this shit and not go "What the fuck is wrong with me?" (Look. I've been there. It's NEVER seeing print. It no longer exists.) How can these concepts pass through your brain and you still think "This is exactly what I want the entire world to read about: My heroine saving men from incest by talking them into having sex with her instead."